Tag: workforce development

FARM Program Announces 2025 Excellence Awards Winners

Posted on by Rachel Ravencraft

Integrity, ingenuity and the pursuit of excellence earned three farms and one program evaluator this year’s National Dairy Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (FARM) Program’s Excellence Awards, which were announced Nov. 11 at the Joint Annual Meeting.

The awards recognize participants who uphold program values by demonstrating U.S. dairy farmers are committed to producing high quality, wholesome milk.

The 2025 FARM Excellence Award recipients are:

  • Animal Care & Antibiotic Stewardship — Bar E Dairy (Land O’Lakes, Inc.)
  • Environmental Stewardship — Five Star Dairy Farm LLC (Associated Milk Producers Inc.)
  • Workforce Development — Glezen Farms, LLC (Maola Local Dairies)
  • Evaluator of the Year — Lisa Ford (Cayuga Marketing)

“These winners exemplify FARM’s mission of continuous improvement through action, integrity and resilience,” Chief Veterinary Officer Dr. Meggan Hain said. “It’s our honor to highlight the good deeds of the dairy industry, not only to assure customers, but also to reward farmers for their continued contributions and dedication.”

FARM created the awards in 2021 to celebrate farms dedicated to continuous improvement in each of the FARM Program pillars and to recognize a FARM Program evaluator for their exceptional care and attention to the farms they evaluate. The awards are judged by FARM Farmer Advisory Council members and other subject matter experts.

Farms and evaluators may be nominated by fellow dairy farmers and evaluators, members of their communities, extension, cooperative or processor staff, veterinarians, or other industry professionals.

About the winners:

  • Bar E Dairy is located in Kingsburg, CA, and is a member of Land O’Lakes, Inc. Bar E Dairy received the 2025 FARM Excellence Award in Animal Care & Antibiotic Stewardship for its commitment to exceptional animal welfare and judicious use of antibiotics through on-farm technology and innovation.
  • Five Star Dairy Farm LLC is located in Alma, WI, and is a member of Associated Milk Producers Inc. Five Star Dairy earned the 2025 FARM Excellence Award in Environmental Stewardship for its use of conservation practices to promote and maintain the land, water and wildlife in its community.
  • Glezen Farms, LLC is located in Lisle, NY, and is a member of Maola Local Dairies. Glezen Farms secured the 2025 FARM Excellence Award in Workforce Development for its dedication to fostering a safe, informed and responsible workforce through training and resource investment.
  • Lisa Ford is based in Auburn, NY, and is a FARM Program evaluator for Cayuga Marketing. Lisa took home the 2025 FARM Evaluator Excellence Award for her devotion to serving Cayuga members through education, leadership and advocacy.

FARM Program Offers HR and Safety Support

Posted on by Rachel Ravencraft

By Sage Saffran, Manager, Sustainability Initiatives

Dairy owners and managers are often looking for ways to attract and retain employees. That’s why the National Dairy Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (FARM) Workforce Development Program offers resources to support farms in recruiting, training and managing workers. The program equips dairy owners and managers with tools to enhance safe and thriving work environments.

Developed in consultation with professional and academic experts, farmers, and cooperative and processor staff, the program highlights best practices in human resources (HR) and safety. To support implementation, the program offers a wide variety of fillable templates, fact sheets, self-assessments and manuals.

The fillable templates cover topics from job applications to performance reviews, training logs and more. All templates are available to download for free in English and Spanish. Dairy owners and managers are encouraged to tailor the templates to their specific needs. State legal fact sheets, which are updated annually, summarize applicable state laws and regulations for dairy farms in plain language. FARM WFD offers reference manuals for both HR and safety topics, in addition to a fully customizable employee handbook.

Retaining labor is critically important, and prioritizing efforts to implement best practices in HR and safety can help with that. “FARM Workforce Development gave us an opportunity to review our existing safety and training protocols and identify areas we could strengthen,” Newmont Farm owner Will Gladstone said in a FARM Impact story. “It’s been helpful for both managers and employees to have written documentation of safety procedures and employee resources.” Gladstone shared his experience as a FARM WFD participant in FARM’s Impact Story feature, which aims to highlight farmers’ experiences with the program.

Additionally, FARM WFD uses an on-farm second-party evaluation tool to help farms learn about HR and safety management best practices, identify which practices will be most useful to implement on their farm, and track improvement over time.

The program area launched Version 2 in July 2024, updating the evaluation tool used to voluntarily assess and encourage adoption of HR and safety best practices on-farm. In Version 2, the evaluation was restructured to better group questions of similar themes and contains seven additional questions to further strengthen the tool surrounding communication and performance management. 475 Version 2 evaluations were completed in 2024 through 13 participating cooperatives and processors.

The FARM WFD program continues to update its suite of resources, including annual updates of its state legal fact sheets.

To learn more about FARM WFD, visit nationaldairyfarm.com.

This column originally appeared in Hoard’s Dairyman Intel on June 30, 2025.